The Relationship between Pro-Innovation Factors and the Performance of the European Union Member States and their Regions

Abstract

The strategic priority of the European Union is research, development and innovation, as has been explicitly stated by its representatives since 2000. However, the reality of supporting research and development, innovation and overall economic performance at the threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is different. Europe is significantly losing its global share in wealth creation. Therefore, the objective of the article is to identify relationships between the economic performance and the pro-innovation factors, which represents intensity of research and development at the level of national economy of the EU Member States. At their regional level, NUTS 2, the economic performance is compared with the pro-innovation factors, which are represented on the one hand as the proportion of employed persons with higher education or persons working in the field of science and technology, and on the other hand as the proportion of persons employed in the high-tech sector. Research has shown that the contribution of R&D spending to economic performance is not invariant, that there is probably a certain degree of saturation for which the increase in these expenditures is associated with lower increases in economic performance in the country. The results of the regional analysis can be used to infer the higher importance of persons employed in research and university-educated workers for the country's economic performance compared to the share of those employed in the high-tech sector.